Windows 10: My microphone is suddenly being detected as an output device.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 16 and I have Windows 11. Suddenly, my microphone was being detected as a speaker device. I went through threads of people who had similar issues but nothing I tried worked. I updated drivers, uninstalled devices, rolled back driver updates, plugged my microphone into a different usb port, restarted, troubleshooted. The issue is not with the microphone itself. I also have not recently updated my laptop, so this was not a result of an update. Finally, I tried uninstalling all realtek related audio devices from my device manager and restarted my laptop. This seemed t

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Microphone detected but no output of sound

Hey,

I'm out of ideas. I have an XLR condenser microphone that connects to a preamp that then connects to my PC via USB.

Windows sees the device, I've reinstall drivers, the latest Windows update, and all of the normal things I can think of. The premap shows that my microphone is picking up sound, but I get no output to any application or Windows itself.

Any thoughts here or suggestions?

 

Waves Maxx Audio Pro not detecting any output device

Hello，Vinayak Nandan

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft community.



Knowing that you are not detecting any output devices in Waves Maxx Audio Pro, you can firstly go to the laptop manufacturer's website to download the latest USB drivers, override and install them into the system, then reboot the device to ensure that the audio-related drivers have been updated to the latest version, and then you can test the following two issues, which will help us to confirm whether there is any abnormality at the hardware level This will help us to confirm whether there is any abnormality at the hardware level, and make it easier for us to take troubleshooting steps at the system level afterwards:

• You may have another output device connected to the same port to check if it works.
  
• If there is another port, try connecting the headset with microphone to another port.
  
• Connect the device to another computer and see if it is recognised.
  

Finally, please right-click on the Start icon and select Device Manager, check if there is any microphone related content in the drop-down list of "Audio Input and Output".



Looking forward to your reply!



Best Regards，

Rota Ye |Microsoft Community Support Specialist

 

Playback detecting Input Devices & Recording detecting Output Devices

Hello!

Today, I was playing SCP: Secret Laboratory. After I finished, I went and made tea. When I came back much later to play some more, I found that the in-game voice chat was not working for me; my microphone was not transmitting in-game.
Looking into my Steam settings, I found that all my input devices were actually my output devices, and all my output devices were actually input devices. I initially thought this was an issue with Steam, so I restarted Steam and my PC.
However, when the problem did not resolve, I looked to my sound settings and found that even in there, my playback devices detected inputs as outputs and recording devices detected outputs as inputs.

How am I able to fix this problem?

Images:





The VoiceMeeter inputs and outputs are from a sound managing device called VoiceMeeter Banana that I installed to allow for the creation of virtual line ins.